What Dan Harms fails to mention in LPEA’s
La Plata Electric is an owner of Tri-State and has an investment of well over $70 million in Tri-State. Unfortunately some of the board members and the management want to fix something that is not broken.
They have spent hundreds of thousands of your dollars suing Tri-State, trying to break the contract that guarantees LPEA members a clean, reliable and affordable supply of electricity. Tri-State is obligated under a contract to supply LPEA with all their electricity needs.
LPEA is a distribution coop. LPEA has no expertise in electric generation. If it’s not broken, the LPEA Board should not try to fix it. Tri-State has an excellent track record. When was the last time you had an outage caused by Tri-State?
Harms is wrong! If LPEA spends all those millions of your dollars to break their contract with Tri-State, then LPEA will sacrifice reliability. All those people with solar panels get their electricity at night, when it is cloudy, when their panels are covered with snow, from Tri-State.
Harms admits that renewable energy must be backed up with carbon-based power.
You must ask, why would the board give up a good reliable company like Tri-State? I say follow the money.
Davin MontoyaHesperusEditor’s note: Montoya served on the LPEA board of directors 1990-2020 and on the Tri-State board 1992-2002. According to an LPEA spokesperson, “Initial estimates show that we could save hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of our contract with Tri-State by exiting (partially or fully) early. That is why the board believes the costs being incurred for legal fees to pursue an exit charge are worth the initial investment.”
